Eagalic Music

This morning we purchase train tickets for Ghaya, the jumping off point for Bodh Gaya, our destination.  This is the site where, as legend has it, Lord Buddha attained the state of enlightenment while sitting under the “Bo” tree.  We  return to our hotel to pack and once again our makeshift altar is bedecked with [...]

As usual, buying train tickets takes nearly a full day but at the end of it we have four, first class, air-conditioned coach, train tickets to Varanasi. Expensive tickets to be sure, but we are all feeling out-of-sorts and rather unwell in the past 24 hours. We can’t face up to another grueling journey and [...]

I spend the rest of the day floating around with the family, taking tea, reading, resting, digesting everything that has happened the day before. Later in the day, despite my previous resolve, I start on the exercises given to me by Ali Moosa but only after first promising myself to do them just once a [...]

We are back outside the gates of the dargah.  Karen is armed with a bag of samosas and another of bananas, determined this time to successfully feed the beggars.  Whether it is because she is inwardly prepared this time and therefore more circumspect or whether it is just the phase of the moon, she is [...]

We are standing, once again at the end of the rose-scented lane, near the entrance to the dargah.  Karen has decided to do something to help alleviate the misery of the beggars who are gathered at the gates, palms outstretched and beseeching. She buys about twenty nans from a baker in an open stall, in [...]